


vanilla honey

by painting



Category: Uncategorized - Fandom
Genre: Allergies, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-05 22:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17333147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/painting/pseuds/painting
Summary: "Yeah, I just had to get rid of it," Josh says. "Arnold's allergic to it.""He'sallergicto it?" Mum repeats, sounding scandalised. "He's been staying with you almost a week, Joshua, it's taken you this long to clear it out?""No, no, I mean, like, no, not like that," Josh clarifies. "I just mean it makes him sneeze, you know, like that kind of allergic."





	vanilla honey

**Author's Note:**

> if you werent lucky enough to be born a sneeze liker then you probably want to go somewhere else because you will lose interest fast. sorry to be the guy who posts long fics in a way that indulges a very specific niche of people. i marked this as uncategorized for that reason
> 
> if you know me from somewhere else then youre fine! i dont have to apologize to you. enjoy

Josh is playing tetris inside of his mum's freezer on a Tuesday morning, gallantly struggling to find a resting place for the glass container of pineapple-basil sorbet he brought over before the ice crystals start to melt and turn the pulp into a runny pineapple-basil jam instead. It was hot out two days ago when he'd made it, but now that the weather has cooled down some, nobody at home is interested.

"Oh, the inside of the bag's gone all cold!" Mum complains.

Josh pushes a squat and frosty Tupperware full of what might be broccoli off to the side and tries to push his sorbet into the empty space it provides. No luck.

"It's fine," he says impatiently. "Just– it'll warm up in a second, okay? It's fine."

He moves a couple of things to a higher shelf, turning one of the containers over on its side in a stroke of brilliance. He expertly places the sorbet underneath and wonders if he'll ever get his glass canister back.

"What else have you brought?" Mum asks. She's got Josh's bag on the kitchen table, looking focused as she rummages through its supplies. Josh turns around and leans on the counter to talk to her. "What's this one? Shower gel?"

"Oh, yeah. The cherry blossom," Josh says. Mum is holding the bottle away from her face, chin up and eyes tilted down as she tries to read Palmolive's high-flown description of the product on the back. "I thought you and Hannah could maybe use it."

"It's half empty," Mum remarks after tilting it back and forth like a seesaw. "What's wrong with it?"

"Yeah, I just had to get rid of it," Josh says. "Arnold's allergic to it."

"He's _allergic_ to it?" Mum repeats, sounding scandalised. "He's been staying with you almost a week, Joshua, it's taken you this long to clear it out?"

"No, no, I mean, like, no, not like that," Josh clarifies. "I just mean it makes him sneeze, you know, like that kind of allergic."

Mum relaxes upon realizing that her son hasn't been risking his boyfriend's presumed anaphylactic reaction due to his own laziness or disorganization. She turns the bottle over.

"Oh. Okay. Sure," she says. "I remember him getting hay fever sometimes back at Wollooma."

"Yeah, it's like that." Josh watches her put the bottle down and place it at the end of the table before she resumes unpacking. "That's why it took us such a long time to realise."

It had probably only taken _Arnold_ just a moment to figure out, both because he was heaps smart about that sort of thing and it happened very shortly after he started sleeping over, but he didn't divulge anything to Josh until he'd moved a single suitcase's capacity of clothing into Josh's dresser and realised that the list of toiletries he'd remembered to pack extended to his toothbrush and medications and absolutely nothing else. He'd been funny about it, too, like he was about most things, acting like he was trying to protect Josh's feelings while telling him that he was sensitive to the soap he'd bought on a whim months ago just because it was on sale.

Following Arnold's confession, Josh was essentially able to put the pieces together. Retroactively, it all made plenty of sense.

When Arnold had first used Josh's shower, it was by himself the on the second evening ever that he stayed at Josh's house. He was sniffling incessantly by the time he returned to Josh's bedroom with a sea-green towel covering his lower half and his hair dripping cold tap water down onto his shoulders, but some people got like that when they experienced a change in humidity, so Josh didn't scrutinize him for it. He was mostly focused on staring at the way the muscles on Arnold's back flexed and shifted as he slipped into some of Josh's borrowed clothes to sleep in; something about that always ignited something elemental in him that felt almost possessive, but in a sweet, romantic way and not a creepy one.

What he wanted to do next was spend some more time entwined together, wasting hours in bed until their bodies became hot and sticky and uncouth – but in a cute, intimate way – _not a creepy one_ – and then they could maybe have another shower or head into the kitchen for tea before probably having sex again or even just falling asleep. Josh whimsically harassed Arnold until he came back into bed with him so they could get an early start on their evening plans.

Things felt so easy with him, like a game of chase that had a predefined end to it every time, Josh reaching the edge first and excitedly waiting for Arnold behind the finish line.

Finally, Arnold complied. He always did. His skin was soft and sweet-smelling and cold under the covers with Josh, who took advantage of it by flipping over to hide his face in the dip where Arnold's neck connected with his shoulder. The position amplified every sound Arnold made, and Josh could feel the vibrations in his throat as he spoke, always more pronounced as his voice got louder. His sniffling continued throughout their conversation, though Josh barely remembers what it was about because the erratic jerking of Arnold's chest as he did so ended up distracting Josh and becoming the primary focus of his attention.

Thankfully, Josh had enough practice navigating conversations with his awareness split in half to keep the moment between them feeling vibrant and fluid. He liked how receptive Arnold was to the tactile multitasking Josh preferred to engage in while spending time with a boy, utilizing their closeness to create a second activity for himself and adding a layer of connection to their time together. The idea of spending time with someone like Arnold if you couldn't be touching him for most of it sounded thoroughly agonising. Most of the time, and under normal conditions, Arnold accepted this from Josh just fine, almost like he was meant to. It was easier to talk to him like this; more relaxed, and with plenty of opportunities to change or lighten a subject by flipping Arnold around or tugging at his hair or fidgeting with his hands.

Arnold did abruptly stop talking at one point, his voice wavering instead of definitive before he turned his head to the side, his shoulder moving and jostling Josh's head along with it as he sneezed — two of those cute, tight little ones that he liked to try for as long as he could manage them, both identical and with just a short, surprised gasp in between.

"Bless you!" Josh said immediately, because he liked Arnold and that was something you were supposed to say to someone you liked. He didn't make much a habit of it otherwise.

Arnold didn't respond right away, so Josh looked up at him and found him squinting expectantly at the lamp with one of his eyes so tensed up that it had almost shut entirely. Josh stared at him on accident, appreciating the preciousness of a situation wherein Arnold was blocked off from his own natural hypervigilant perception of everything and everyone around him.

Following a long crescendo of an inhale and a lift of his chest, Arnold sneezed a third time, a hand coming halfway to his mouth for no reason because he'd held that one in too. He hurriedly thanked Josh on the release and sniffled again as he deflated back down into the pillows, his eyebrows drawn together like he was still bothered.

"You okay…?" Josh asked.

"Yeah," Arnold said. He angled his head back away from Josh and sniffled again, that time a little louder as he roughly dragged his index and middle knuckles down the side of his nose before turning back. "Yeah, sorry. I'm fine."

Josh smiled reassuringly, and Arnold closed the pesky gap between their faces and kissed him.

That lasted a while; making out was an easy activity to get lost in. Sometimes it felt like days were passing uninterrupted, the rest of the world frozen and irrelevant as they shrouded themselves within one another. Arnold was surprisingly vehement when it came to kissing, especially for someone so reticent, but the contrast of all of that made kissing him significantly more exciting. It seemed like one of the only opportunities Arnold deliberately allowed himself to experience actual liberation. It was the right choice for everybody, because he was so good at it.

Regrettably, Arnold ended up pulling away prematurely with a shaky series of breaths and a run-of-the-mill panicked look in his eyes. While laying on his side with his arms both around Josh, he must have realised he didn't have enough time to cover the lower part of his face which ultimately led to him opting to bend his head down and rigidly stifle a sneeze toward Josh's shoulder.

"Fuck. Sorry—" he started to say before Josh kissed him briefly on the mouth.

"—snuck up on—" he continued when they parted, so Josh kissed him again for a moment longer than before, just to stop him from apologising for having to sneeze as though he had any control over something like that.

Arnold got the hint without Josh having to verbally assure him that it was fine if he had to sneeze, whatever, and they continued on for not enough time (could there ever be enough time?) until it happened again.

His body seemed to have given him more of a heads-up that time, because he put a hand to Josh's chest and told him to "hang on" with a novel tension in his voice as he turned his head away. He stayed like that for a moment before dipping his head down to hold in another sneeze. His body jolted along with it and stayed tense even as he sighed out afterward.

"Are you sure you're…"

"Yeah. Fine," Arnold lied breathlessly. He twisted more of his body away from Josh and held a hand up near his face for the next sneeze, the tail end of it escaping with a tiny blunt spraying sound. Josh couldn't tell whether that was sort of cute because of his feelings for Arnold or if it just was all on its own.

"Yeah?" Josh said.

" _Fuck_. Sorry," Arnold repeated. "I, uh. I'm okay." And yet he sinfully began to wriggle himself out from underneath Josh and slide himself toward the edge of the bed. "I need to get something from the bathroom. I'll be right back."

Josh heard Arnold sneeze again out in the common area and suspected he would have heard him anyway even if he hadn't left the door open. Then, he heard Arnold blowing his nose for quite a while and wondered why he couldn't have just done that in Josh's room that had actual tissues in it. It was quiet for a moment once he was finished, followed by the sound of the tap running very briefly before Arnold returned to him good as new.

He excused the episode as his hay fever acting up, saying that sometimes it just got to him randomly and for no reason and that he took care of it and everything should be fine now.

He was right, until something similar happened a couple weeks later.

Of course, it was after Arnold had been in the shower, though, again, Josh hadn't been able to recognize the pattern until after Arnold had spelled it out for him. Unlike before, it was during a slow, lazy morning when Josh wasn't working and they'd chosen to lie in bed and bask in the inactivity before finally rolling out for breakfast at half past ten. Josh was almost finished caramelising a heap of sliced peaches when Arnold came back out from the bedroom, dressed for the day with his hair still shiny and his face tinged pink with a freshly-scrubbed glow.

"Hey sunshine," Josh greeted him, abandoning his task to walk over to the doorway and grab Arnold by the waist.

"Missed you," Arnold said since they'd been apart for twenty minutes.

He leaned up to kiss Josh, a hand squeezing his bicep. They stayed like that for at least a few seconds before Josh had to resume cooking and Arnold grabbed a napkin from the edge of the counter. Josh had to pass him on his way over to the fridge, so he put both hands on either side of Arnold's head and kissed the top of it while Arnold had the napkin tented around his nose. Arnold looked up and then spun around to kiss him again for real.

He grabbed another napkin on his way over to the table. During their conversation, he continually used it to fiddle with his nose, dragging the napkin down to the edge of it and moving it back and forth or massaging the sides of it as he tried to curve his body away from Josh, who could still see the whole thing anyway. Arnold was sniffling a lot regardless, in that same brusque, itchy way that Josh remembered from before.

Inevitably, Arnold ended up sneezing before the food was even finished. He didn't aim it off to the side like he usually did, but instead held his free hand flatly over the bridge of his nose as he winced into it. The bottled-up gasp to that one was released as a frustrated, vocalised sigh.

"God," he said frustratedly, emphatic and under his breath, and sniffled again. "Jesus Christ."

" _Bless_ you," Josh said hastily after just the one, unable to look up at him as he drizzled honey and set a garnish on top of a glass dish of layered yogurt. He was getting really good at unwinding Arnold by using hyperbole to make fun of something pointless that he would start to get upset about. He had been good at that from the start, but he found himself quickly and steadily becoming an expert.

He delivered the parfait to Arnold, who was always polite and waited for Josh to sit down with his own plate before he started eating.

"Thank you," Arnold said, about either the food or Josh's nicety, but then he sneezed again once Josh was back at the counter. That part wasn't unusual; they sometimes happened for him in pairs like that, but he was usually able to keep them impressively subdued at first, at the best of times just a whisper of a sound that one might only notice if they were either touching him or staring right at him fixatedly. Both of these had been much more present, all expressive and demanding and noticeable despite Arnold not actually letting them go.

Josh sat down across the table and kicked at Arnold's feet to say hello. He listened to the birds along with Arnold's persistent sniffling as they ate together and discussed whether Tom might play or cheat at drunk pictionary once he got home from work. Josh had assumed Arnold would be staying that long.

Arnold only sneezed once while they were both at the table, but because it happened while Josh was in the middle of speaking he only tacked on an acknowledgement at the end of his sentence and gave Arnold a break by not commenting further. Despite this, Arnold seemed distracted throughout their snack, often gazing upward or off to the side with his eyes narrowed instead of stretched like they usually were when he did that. Josh chose not to say anything because everything else they were talking about had simply felt more interesting as it was happening.

The next one came just about ten minutes later, when Arnold was helping Josh wash up at the sink. With his hands covered in soap and Josh standing so close to him, his best option was to lift his arm just enough to keep his hand from dripping onto the counter so he could press his face into his shoulder. Josh, with his dry, clean hands, held Arnold's head in place once he was done so he could kiss Arnold's cheek and then scratch the back of his head.

"Hi, what's going on?" Josh said.

Arnold sniffled fiercely and leaned back into Josh’s touch as Josh stepped back, keeping a hand curled around Arnold's shoulder to keep them connected.

"Um…" he said. He started to rinse off his hands. "I just—"

"Are you trying to be, like, crafty about telling me to tidy up my house? Because, you know, I've swept the floors for you, Arnold, I've dusted everything top to bottom, spick and span! So I really don't think I'm the problem here."

Josh felt a swell of triumph when Arnold rolled his eyes and smiled.

"Yeah, no, it's— seriously, it's not that," Arnold promised. Even though his voice was starting to sound off, he seemed at ease, his mouth still turned up and his shoulders slumped in fond exasperation. "Um, I just— like, it's fine, I'll just… Uh, just give me a minute."

"Sure," Josh said amicably, in an effort to reinforce to Arnold how comfortable he was adjusting to whatever extra Arnold-things were going to be in his life if they continued to be together. And that was the thing; he _was_ comfortable with all of it; he was a laid-back guy. With time, he predicted that Arnold would come to a place that allowed him to believe that.

At that moment, though, Josh could only watch Arnold disappear to another room to fret and fix whatever was wrong with him. It was the best he was allowed to do.

Arnold did get closer to Josh when he came clean about a month later. Moving in together felt seamless, even though it happened so quickly and only because of the emergency circumstance of Arnold getting kicked out of his house. They stayed on the roof with Tom and Dad indulging each other in the malaise accumulated over the past few days and then went to bed just like they would have done on any other night that Arnold ended up sleeping over. The situation fit in on itself almost too well, giving Josh a chance to put his sensitivity research to practice full time and providing Arnold with the experience of finally living on his own, without his overprotective family or a smothering hospital staff to watch over him.

It was clearly working even a couple hours in, when Arnold practiced assertiveness while lying in bed with Josh and said: "I need to go to the store tomorrow."

"Okay," Josh said. "Why?"

"I'm allergic to your body wash."

The way he said it was so curt and confrontational that it sounded almost defensive, maybe even combative, like Arnold had planned and worked up the courage to say it. Josh wouldn't be surprised if he had. He hardly understood why, but there were a lot of things about Arnold that he didn't understand right away.

"What?" Josh said. "No, you're…" He tilted his head so he could see him better. "Um. What? No you're not."

"Yes," Arnold insisted. "And I didn't have time to pack mine so I need to buy a new one."

"You're allergic to it?"

"I don't just, like, get random sneezing fits out of nowhere," Arnold disclosed. "That's not a thing."

"Definitely thought it was a thing," said Josh.

"It doesn't bother me when it dries," Arnold continued. "Like, it's fine on you during the day, it's just when it's wet and it's been on me, I get…"

"So— you used it anyway?" interrupted Josh. It didn't make any sense.

"At the time I thought: this is just temporary and I'd rather be clean and— like— clean and itchy than skip showering for a day. But it's different now and I just don't want to take an antihistamine every time I have a shower," he said. "So I need to pick up another one tomorrow."

Absently, Josh thought of his problem-solving father, who would have suggested Arnold use Tom's soap or borrow an extra bottle from another person's overloaded bathroom to save some money and to save himself a trip, maybe calling the idea frivolous, but Josh figured this was none of his business, nor was it worth giving that much thought to. Arnold clearly had plenty of money and could afford to buy whatever type of bath products he liked.

"All right," Josh said. "In the morning you can go to the store and pick out a brand you aren't allergic to."

"Well, I guess…" Arnold said contemplatively. "I guess it might not technically be an allergy, since I don't think there was a histamine response or anything, you know, with something on the skin there would probably be a rash or something, but there wasn't, so it might just be that I'm sensitive to it, but— I still can't use it."

Josh didn't see how that wasn't an allergy, since functionally, it seemed to work exactly the same as one. He decided to refer to it as such anyway and forego the technical definition because it didn't matter.

"Yeah," Josh said. "Yeah, you shouldn't use it, should you? Probably shouldn't have been using it at all in the first place, actually."

"I know—"

"But you know you're allowed to sneeze in my house, right? Like, obviously. Especially now that you live here. You can do plenty of things here now, actually, like sleeping and eating and…"

"Okay. Shut up," Arnold said, and then Josh could feel him smiling as they kissed.

As they started to fall asleep, Arnold on his back with Josh's head resting on his chest, Josh used the provided silence to try and imagine what tomorrow would be like. Arnold would probably wake up first, but he'd considerately wait for Josh to wake up before preparing himself to face the day. They'd finish the sorbet Josh made over the weekend— or at they would at least give it the courtesy of talking about it. Arnold would use his phone to study up on something he was probably better off not knowing. Josh wanted to interrogate Tom about his boss. They'd adjust to each other. While Arnold took a necessary trip off to the shops, Josh planned on donating the obsolete bottle of cherry blossom shower gel to a worthy cause.


End file.
